So if we compare Zane’s Class Mods to Moze’s, which offer things like allowing the player to heal their shields, or to deal up to double damage passively, we’ll never get anywhere, because most of his boosts would need to be tripled or more, and I kinda doubt they’ll ever do that.
So instead I’ll base it off the more reasonable Executor mod, which is probably his best class mod at the moment. It gives him 20% increased critical damage, elemental damage, elemental chance, and probably 20% handling and accuracy as well, though that’s harder to test.
The first item on the list is:
Cold Warrior
This class mod triggers a random status effect on a frozen enemy. That would be alright if the status effect actually did any damage, but at level 50, that’s about 300-400 damage per tick; when I freeze a psycho, the dot will not ever finish that psycho off; the damage is basically irrelevant, and that’s even if it happens to get the right elemental effect.
What if it triggered all status effects on frozen enemies? The damage would at least be better that way, and it would be guaranteed to have a matching element!
It also boosts Ready for Action, Synchronicity, and Trick of the Light, which are at least halfway decent skills.
Shockerator
Gives the Clone the Binary System augment, and when meleed, the clone releases a Shock Nova.
Boosts: Pocket Full of Grenades, Duct Tape Mod, Best Served Cold.
I’m honestly not really sure where they’re going with this class mod. The skills it boosts are Pocket Full of Grenades, Duct Tape Mod, and Best Served Cold, so it seems to be based around some sort of grenade build? But the passive bonuses are clearly based around being right up in the enemy’s face, which is exactly where you DONT want to be when loads of grenades are going off. Maybe there’s some sort of niche build where it would work, but I can’t think of one.
Besides, the damage from both are pathetic. The Cryo Nova does 2500 damage at level 50, and the Shock Nova does 1500 damage, and requires being meleed to work. Neither effect is great, or even good, really.
It’s just…bad. I’m not honestly sure how it could be made better while maintaining its identity at all.
Yikes.
Techspert
5% chance on kill to reset SNTNL’s duration.
Boosts: Rise to the Occasion, Ready for Action, Really Expensive Jacket.
This one’s both too low and too useless. If the player wants to keep their drone out there, then Good Misfortune is far, far more effective at doing so. In my testing, I very rarely got the bonus to proc, and even when it did, because Good Misfortune had already degraded to not working anymore, the bonus was more like a 25% bonus to duration than doubling it like advertised.
It’s like a really inconsistent, less powerful version of Calm, Cool, Collected that you can’t rely on. If it were based on some sort of countdown(every 15 kills, instantly reset SNTNL’s cooldown or duration) it would at least be reliable, but as-is, you can’t rely on it, so you can’t really build around it, and that makes the bonus useless.
As for the skills it boosts, they’re…okay? Again, not anything a player could really build around, though. An extra few percent shield regen or health regen are really pretty minimal bonuses, and are usually the sort of thing a player takes to get to deeper skills, not for their own sake. The only halfway decent skill is Really Expensive Jacket, but even that’s mainly good because it’s a single-point skill. If you’ll recall, in BL2, very few people took the skills that reduced dot damage, simply because most of the time you can just heal through them instead.
So none of the boosted skills are particularly worth taking, the bonus isn’t worth taking, and the class mod as a whole isn’t worth taking.
Maybe have it boost SNTNL’s duration by 50%? If I had to switch the skill bonuses around, I’d move something to Nerves of Steel, since that’s a bonus that’s quite nice, but hard to get, so if someone wanted a big bonus to their accuracy, they might take the class mod just for that.
Infiltrator
Last on the list, this one is actually pretty decent. It offers +20% Damage and Movement Speed, as long as the player’s shields are broken. It also gives bonuses to Violent Momentum, Supersonic Man, and Like a Ghost.
The only real issue with this class mod is by comparison to other character’s class mods. Again, Moze can get +100% splash damage just by not reloading, which is very easy for her to achieve. Zane needs to sacrifice his shield to get a mere 20% damage bonus. If Moze’s bonus only gave, say, 35% bonus damage, I’d rate this mod as being perfectly decent, but as-is, I’d call it solidly ‘meh’.
Just bring it up to compare with other classes class mods and it’d be fine.
Conclusion
So yeah, four out of five of Zane’s class mods are at best ‘meh’. That certainly can’t help him stand up to other classes when playing together. If they could be brought up to snuff, that would be most gentlemanly.